As wireless communication becomes more and more popular at offices, homes, schools, etc., the contentions for shared resources and dynamic channel conditions will cause network congestions and slowdowns. In particular, popular applications such as video and/or multimedia streaming contribute to the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth. To regulate the amount of data contending for available resources, a wireless communication network may implement an admission control policy. Typically, a node such as an access point (AP) may control traffic flows through that particular AP by requiring a station (STA) to provide traffic flow information including parameters such as data rate, delay bounds, packet size, etc. For example, the station may be a wireless electronic device such as a laptop computer, a handheld computer, a cordless or cellular telephone, a pager, a navigation device, a wireless peripheral (e.g., a keyboard), etc. Accordingly, the station may transmit an admission control request including the traffic flow parameters to the AP. In one particular example, the station may transmit an add traffic specification (TSPEC) (ADDTS) request as described in the 802.11e standard developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Based on current conditions, the AP may accept or reject the admission control request by the station. If the AP accepts the admission control request, the station may transmit data via a link (e.g., a wireless medium (WM)) to the AP during a particular interval of time (e.g., a transmission opportunity (TXOP)).
The admission control scheme described above may be well suited for traffic flows from a station to an AP and vice versa. However, such an AP-station based configuration may not be adequate to control admission of traffic flows through a wireless multi-hop mesh network with distributed architecture. Thus, the amount of data contending for available resources associated with such wireless communication network requires a new regulatory and control mechanism to avoid performance degradations and/or overload conditions.